Pearson International Airport
Lester B. Pearson International Airport, also known simply as "Toronto Airport" is the major airport serving the city of Toronto and the surrounding area, and the busiest airport in Canada. Toronto Airport plays a prominent role in the episode "Black Buddha Pt. 1" when an airplane taking off from the airport is blown up by a bomb that has been hidden in the cockpit. Nick Knight's partner, Don Schanke, is on board with Capt. Cohen, escorting an extradited prisoner to Alberta. At the time the plane explodes, Nick is driving around in his car getting to know Tracy Vetter, a newly promoted rookie detective whom he has been assigned to work with in Schanke's absence. Perhaps because his real partner is on his mind, he has driven out near the airport. He and Tracy see the plane explode and call it in. They then go down to the crash site to see if there is any help they can give. They discover that all but one of the passengers has been killed; a baby is the only survivor. Nick only realizes that this is the flight that Schanke has been on when he finds his partner's ID in the debris. .]] A hangar at the airport is designated for recovery operations, and what remains of the bodies is taken there. Dr. Lambert is in charge of their forensic identification. However, the investigation of the explosion has been taken over by the RCMP; and Nick has to hypnotize the Mountie on security detail in order to get in to see her. Dr. Lambert tells him that three of the passengers are unaccounted for: two women, and a man named J. D. Valdez. Nick does not learn until later that Valdez is actually the current alias of a vampire. Tracy Vetter had spotted Valdez at the crash site. However, when she insisted that she had seen the apparent corpse move, she was told that she had to be mistaken, since all the passengers had died. In the hangar at the airport, though, she sees him again. He has come to the temporary morgue seeking one of his hands, which had been blown off in the explosion. When he finds it, he reattaches it (and it evidently grows back on). The History of Malton Airport The airport first opened in 1939 as Malton Airport, named for its location near the town of Malton, northwest of Toronto. It is still sometimes called by that name by older residents of the city. The airport was originally intended to serve as a secondary airport for Toronto, for use when bad weather closed the Toronto Island Airport. Malton Airport was sold to the City of Toronto in 1940 and was used as a military training airport during World War II. Transport Canada obtained control of Malton Airport in 1958, and the airport was renamed Toronto International Airport in 1960. In 1984, it was renamed yet again, becoming Lester B. Pearson International Airport, in honour of Lester B. Pearson, the 14th Prime Minister of Canada and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Operationally, the airport is often referred to as Toronto Pearson. In Black Buddha Pt. 1, for example, the flight crew on board the doomed airplane address the control tower as "Pearson". However, although the airport is sometimes referred to as "Pearson Airport" on the news to distinguish it from the much smaller Island Airport, to most residents of Toronto, it is simply known as "the airport". Toronto Airport is one of eight Canadian airports with facilities for United States border preclearance, meaning that passengers heading for the U.S. go through customs at the airport in Toronto before the plane takes off. The code assigned to Toronto Airport by the International Air Transport Association is YYZ. ::Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Toronto Pearson International Airport. Category:Toronto